The Problem of Evil - Common Sense Atheism

The Problem and Argument from Evil 5
problems about how to respond to evil when we encounter it in our lives,
or at any rate I mean only a very small minority of the problems that
satisfy this description. I mean problems that confront theists when they
encounter evil; and by ‘‘encounter evil’’, I mean primarily ‘‘encounter
some particular evil’’. 6 By ‘‘problems that confront theists’’ I mean
problems about how their beliefs about, their attitudes concerning,
and their actions directed towards, God are going to be affected by
their encounter with evil. Practical problems of evil may be further
divided into personal and pastoral problems. A personal problem arises
typically when one, or someone whom one is close to, suffers some
terrible misfortune; or, less typically, when one suddenly learns of some
terrible event in the public sphere that does not directly affect one but
nevertheless engages one’s general human sympathies. (The two most
historically salient cases of this are the reactions to the Lisbon earthquake
and the Holocaust by contemporaries or near-contemporaries of these
events who were not directly affected by them.) Pastoral problems are
the problems that confront those who, in virtue of their clerical office or
of some other relation to a person, regard themselves as responsible for
the spiritual welfare of that person when the person encounters evil in
the way I have just described. Personal problems of evil raise questions
like these: What shall I believe about God, can I continue to love and
trust God, how shall I act in relation to God, in the face of this thing
that has happened? Pastoral problems of evil raise the question: What
spiritual guidance shall I give to someone for whom some terrible thing
has raised practical questions about his relationship with God?
Further distinctions are possible within these categories. One might,
for example, as the above discussion suggests, divide personal problems
into those that arise out of the person’s own misfortune (this was Job’s
case) and those that arise out of misfortunes of others. (Even for the
most altruistic person, problems of these two kinds may have quite
different characters.) But let us turn to theoretical problems.
I would divide theoretical problems of evil into the apologetic and
the doctrinal. Doctrinal problems are problems faced by theologians:
What shall the Christian—or Jewish or Muslim—teaching on evil be?
What views on the origin and place of evil in the world are permissible
views for Christians—or for Jews or for Muslims? Doctrinal problems
are problems that are created by the fact that almost all theists subscribe
to some well-worked-out and comprehensive theology that goes far
beyond the assertion of the existence of an all-powerful and beneficent
Creator. Attempts by theists to account for the evils of the world